To Kill a Pig
“We do a pig roast.” Angel said, cracking open another pair of overly expensive Bud Lights in our ridiculous Vegas room at the MGM. We’d just woken up after a marathon of a night that included seeing Tiesto, getting ejected out of a strip club, and throwing an impromptu party in our room which had a pool table in it.
“What? Like, in a China box?” I was getting excited.
“Yeah, in a China box.”
That was all the convincing i needed to get on board with the idea of spending my Christmas in Puerto Rico.
My buddy Angel, in a vineyard in Croatia.
I arrived into San Juan around 10 at night two days before Christmas. Like anywhere new, i really had no idea what to expect when i got there, as every place you go has sights, sounds, and feelings that you cannot begin to convey with words or appreciate just by reading. What i should have expected was my luggage to take over an hour to finally come out. When i explained the delays to Angel over the phone, who was waiting for me with his cousin outside the airport, his only response was “God damnit, Puerto Rico!”
We drove down to Patillas, the city he's from, that night, taking a less direct mountainous road. It would be a number of weeks before i’d go the same route again during the day and actually get to see what was surrounding us, but it was still a nice drive; quiet and secluded, with nary another car passing us and the chirping of the Coqui echoing through the forest around us.
We stopped about halfway there to grab a couple beers from a very local bar; we were already far enough out where i could expect that the majority of people wouldn’t speak English. Karaoke was happening, and a well dressed man in his 70s was singing a song and dancing salsa with his wife while the crowd watched and smiled. I hadn’t traveled for 3 months, and i hadn’t been somewhere unfamiliar longer than that. It felt good to finally be breathing in strange air, hearing nothing but a language i didn’t speak or understand swirling around me... it felt good to be back in the saddle again, as it were.
That night we stayed at another cousin of Angel’s house, drinking beers and catching up. The next morning, Angel asked if i wanted to get some food. Of course! The two things he promised me in spades if i came to PR was food and alcohol, may as well start now! So we stopped by his grandmother’s house, who had three bowls of food cooking on her stove.
“Who’s she cooking for?”
“No one.” Angle answered. “She just always has food going!”
His grandmother was an adorably sweet old lady. Slight of stature with kind eyes that always have a smile in them, of course she’s his grandmother. There’s literally no one else she could possibly be, she fit the description so perfect.
After breakfast, i was introduced to pitorro... Now, in my month that i spent on the island, i would become very well acquainted with the drink--which is for all intents and purposes Puerto Rican moonshine. (Or rum. But basically an unholy combination of the two.) But this wasn’t just any pitorro, this was Angel’s grandmother’s pitorro. Without prompting, she brought a handle of it to the dining table and poured us both shots. Angel had a look of horror on his face and just shook his head. “I’ve got to warn you... My grandmother is kind of known for this stuff... It’s strong.”
Down it went. I’d like to say it had a slight taste of raisins and figs... but only if those raisins wore Doc Martins and liked to kick people’s heads in for fun while they weren’t busy fermenting in this stuff, and the aftertaste of fig was like spending an entire Iron Maiden concert in the mosh pit fighting. To say it was strong would be an understatement. It would be easier to measure how much of the liquid didn’t have alcohol in it, rather than trying to give it an ABV. I was burping it up for 3 hours after that.
After, Angel took the dishes into the kitchen and started cleaning them. His grandmother (Who doesn’t speak a word of English.) sat there with me, smiling, and started speaking Spanish. Not wanting to be rude, i let her go for a minute, figuring she wouldn’t be going to in depth with any conversation... But she did. She went, and she just kept on going. Playing nice at first, and nodding my head i didn’t want to offend! But eventually i stopped her. “No entiendo, no hablo español.” i tried to explain. She smiled, in that slightly condescending, knowing way that grandmothers are so good at (As if she was saying “No shit. I know that.”) and then just continued on, and on, and on. Then i realized: She really just didn’t give a fuck. She had a captive audience, and she was exploiting it for all it was worth!
Christmas Eve was our work day. Christmas pig roasts are Angel’s family tradition, and Angel specifically was throwing this one so the brunt of the work was falling on his shoulders. Aside from the normal things you have to do to get ready for a party, like grocery shopping, setting up canopies, etc., we also had to contend with the logistics of killing, cleaning, and roasting the pig... And it’s a decent amount of work. (Although, “work” during a Puerto Rican holiday consists of equal parts manual labor and drinking, so it’s not that detestable.)
After cleaning a drum, filling it with water, and starting it to boil (More on that later.) we set out to pick the pig up. The local butcher/pig farmer/general store owner/blood sausage maker/whatever else this guy happened to do was friends with Angel’s uncle. Two hours after getting to his place, i heard “God damnit, Puerto Rico.” the second time from Angel. (I’d hear it plenty more from the island native who spent his teenage years in New York and hadn’t run on Puerto Rican time for a minute before i’d go home.) “They see each other every day! They work together! I just want my pig!”
We finally went and got him. Angel had picked him out a couple days prior, and had already named him. Angel has a tradition of giving the pigs weird names; the last one he did was named Yoo-hoo Mojito. Ours was Luke Skywalker. We got him lasso’d up, tied down in the bed of the truck, picked up our final supplies, and got him home. It was time to start the work in earnest.
Luke Skywalker with Angel’s uncle, back at the ranch.
First step was to actually kill the pig. A lot of people don’t like to think about this aspect of where their meal comes from, and in the majority of the Western world you can successfully go your entire life without ever actually being confronted by it; but i think it’s integral to the experience. Food is amazing, and to me the animals that it comes from are equally as amazing. I don’t think there’s any joy to be had in the act of killing, especially in butchery where the animal is killed without the ceremony or challenge of hunting, but it’s ultimately part of the entire experience when you want the freshest, most delicious meat you can possibly have. So when you do it, you do it with the utmost respect for the animal, and an appreciation for what it’s life is giving you. This is, in essence, why i have no issues with seeing how the sausage is made, If you will. For me, for myself to truly appreciate what i’m enjoying during something like a pig roast, or a hunt, you have to pay your dues with the unsavory aspect of it, bearing witness to the sacrifice of the animal in an act of homage.
The task itself fell on Jorge, Angel’s cousin, as he’d never done it before. We got Luke up on a table and held him down and Jorge killed it with a stroke through it’s breast into it’s heart.
Jorge stabbing the pig, while Angel and his Uncle held it down.
Slaughtering animals can be a pretty grisly thing. To the pig’s credit it didn’t fight much, and went easily.
Now we had to shave it. That was why we had to start 30 gallons of water boiling earlier; just like shaving your face, hot water opens up the pours and makes it easier to remove the hair from the pig. It’s also the most time consuming and pain in the ass part of the entire thing. (Especially for someone like me; i don’t even like shaving my own face much less some pig’s asshole.)
Angel’s uncle and myself shaving the pig. Boiling water is ladled over the areas we’re working on to make shaving easier.
After that comes gutting, which involves cutting the pig open and removing the organs. The operation is a little more delicate than it sounds; care must be taken not to accidentally cut certain organs, like the gallbladder or the urinary tract, because you can easily spoil the meat if you do. This was Angel’s first time actually cleaning the pig, and he did a great job under the watchful guidance of his uncle. (As well as the critical eyes of all his cousins who wouldn’t stop talking shit about him fondling the pig’s dick, or his father who kept telling him he was doing it wrong.)
As the organs came out, Angel’s grandfather separated them; removing the inedible stuff from the mass of things that would be used later.
Once we got it cleaned, we needed to season him. The seasoning is simple; lots of salt, a little less pepper, and even less garlic. The carcass is scored from one end to the other, the goal of which being trying to get as much seasoning into the pig as possible, as well as being rubbed all over it’s exterior.
Angel’s uncle teaching him and Jorge where and how deep to cut when putting the seasoning in.
Last step of the day involving the pig is skewering it, where a long steel spit is inserted from the ass to the mouth, and small cross sectional poles through the shoulders and hips to keep it oriented while it’s cooking.
It had been a long day, all the while we’d been drinking. It was good to finally relax with Angel and his family. Our last task was to take the organs back to the local butcher/pig farmer/general store owner/blood sausage maker/whatever else this guy happened to do, as he is apparently a big deal in the area, known for his morcillas, or blood sausage. (He also had some kicking pitorro. Kicking as in kicked in the fuckin’ teeth, not “Man that stuff was good!” It didn’t even have the gentleness of raisins and figs to slightly soften the brick to the head it gave you like Angel’s grandmother’s pitorro had. It was straight moonshine.)
The guy was more than willing to show me the entire process and had apparently been making the stuff the entire day.
Butcher guy dudebro holding up intestines, which have to be cleaned out 5 times before they can be used as packing for the sausage.
The organs, before being ground up and cooked along with congealed blood.
The actual sausage, fully cooked. I didn’t get the specifics of how to make it (I don’t see myself having the spare organs of a pig just laying around one day and not knowing what to do with them...) and he wouldn’t give us the specifics of the seasoning that went into the brew, but even in this state it was really delicious stuff.
And that’s the final product! The morcillas is perfectly edible like this, but it’s generally taken and deep fried before serving. Even if you’re a picky (Read: Squeamish.) eater, this stuff is worth going outside of your comfort zone for. Easily the best blood sausage i’ve ever had; much better than Spanish blood sausage and that’s saying something!
We headed back to the house after that, and with it being around midnight, and tomorrow being an early morning (You start the pig around 5 AM!) i figured we were done for the day. All of a sudden everyone started heading down to the area where we were going to roast the pig, a handle of pitorro in tow.
“Dude, we’re not done?”
Angel started laughing. “We still got to build the box!”
I want to reiterate that we. Were. Drunk. Very much so at this point. I couldn’t believe when i started seeing Angel’s family start breaking out power tools and sheets of aluminum we’d collected earlier that day. Jorge laughed at the look on my face, “OSHA doesn’t exist out here. Have you ever seen something like this before?” he asked me as his uncle started going to town with a circular saw.
“In Iraq.”
Angel’s uncle, cutting a notch in a piece of aluminum sheeting. Jorge made sure i knew THAT was the saw that his uncle had injured himself very badly with a couple years beforehand.
The China box went together easy. It’s 4 pieces of aluminum sheeting held in place with cinder blocks and stakes with two notches cut in the ends for the spit. In true Puerto Rican Christmas fashion, though, we didn’t stop drinking until 2 in the morning...
I wish i knew more about the morning prep work, but i told Angel to fuck right off when he tried to wake me up two and a half hours later. All that i know is that a fire magically appeared (I’m assuming he had something to do with that.) and after you put the pig on, it has to be constantly rotated until it’s ready to be served. (About six hours later.)
The pig resting in the china box, all cooked and ready to be served up.
I finally got out of bed around 11, wandered up to Angel’s uncle’s casa (We were still sleeping at his other cousin’s further down the hill.) and didn’t find anyone who spoke English awake, so i decided to retire to a hammock overlooking the little valley the barrio was built around, drink some beers, and wish my family Merry Christmas. Not too long, the pig was ready to be served... We quartered the sucker up and loaded aluminum trays, and by that time the family had started appearing wholesale.
Angel’s uncle preparing to carve up the pig. Yes. With a machete.
The Christmas festivities, from what i could gather, are a kind of come and go affair. Over the course of the day dozens and dozens of family will stop by, drink some beers, then move on to any number of other parties they have to get to by the end of the day. Puerto Rican families are large, making Christmas (And the days after, because this basically happens for another 3 or 4 days straight all over the Island.) a very busy time.
By the end of the day, we’d emptied 7 large coolers of beer that had been filled to the brim, (Aside from some Mich Ultras that, no matter how drunk we were, no one wanted.) drank 3 handles of pitorro, (Almond being my favorite by a long shot.) ate that pig, and i’d learned to play dominoes. (Not well.) As far as Christmas celebrations go, it was amazing; one of the best i’ve ever experienced. Angel’s family, despite me being a complete stranger as well as there being a language barrier more often than not, had completely opened their homes to me and brought me into their lives just to share something beautiful and amazing they had. This would be a reoccurring theme over the course of the next month, where friends i’d met only once long ago and people who were strangers before my trip to the island bent over backwards and went out of their way to show me how amazing their home was. Acts of hospitality like i was shown, and people as wonderful as this have only seldom been matched in my travels around the world, and have endeared this little island to me forever. I’ve already planned my next trip back, and it won’t be my last. I’ve fallen in love with the island, it’s people, it’s culture, it’s food, it’s drink, it’s noises, it’s serenity, and every other aspect you could possibly appreciate about it, and i can’t wait to explore it more!
Family and friends playing dominoes. Angel’s team lost.
One last special thanks to Angel, his family, Jorge and Yady, Amanda, and Natalia for making sure i’ll never forget this place and showing me the hidden treasures of your home!
